


everything we did believe

by turnpikedarling



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Roommates to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-16 21:34:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2285250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnpikedarling/pseuds/turnpikedarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek hates his asshole neighbors.</p><p>They’ve always been loud people; they party and fight too late into the night, burn things in the toaster oven and set off the fire alarm, they vacuum at weirdly early hours of the morning. They don’t really seem to care about anyone else in the building, and Derek can never get a feel for their hectic schedule. Living next to them is miserable on a good day, but when they decide that it’s a good idea to start doing renovations on their apartment at the beginning of May, everything goes directly to hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything we did believe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pr1nc3ssp34ch (dallisons)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dallisons/gifts).



> for rogue (thenemeton) who wanted roommates to lovers. you gave me so much good stuff to work with that i almost had no idea where i wanted to start!
> 
> also i think i listened to "apartment story" something like 80 times in a row when i was finishing this, so, you know. that's where the title comes from.
> 
> thank you so so much to kassie and astrid, the mods of this exchange, for everything they did and put up with. you're wonderful and this wouldn't have happened without you!

Derek hates his asshole neighbors. 

They’ve always been loud people; they party and fight too late into the night, burn things in the toaster oven and set off the fire alarm, they vacuum at weirdly early hours of the morning. They don’t really seem to care about anyone else in the building, and Derek can never get a feel for their hectic schedule. Living next to them is miserable on a good day, but when they decide that it’s a good idea to start doing renovations on their apartment at the beginning of May, everything goes directly to hell.

One morning when it’s barely light out and Derek is sleeping soundly, as most people are at 5AM, he’s suddenly and rudely jolted awake by the dulcet sounds of a power drill and early 00s pop music blasting through tinny boombox speakers on the other side of the wall. No note, no considerate knock at the door to let him know what’s going on, just a construction crew with heavy boots and eight hours of uninterrupted noise every day. It goes on for weeks. He doesn’t even mind hearing “Genie In A Bottle” every morning, but he can’t stand the sawdust settling into his lungs - it feels too much like a graveyard in his chest.

It makes Derek restless more than anything. It makes him feel a little bit like he’s the walking and aimlessly wandering dead, and by the second week of construction, he can’t sleep through the night. He ends up exhausted, he starts showing up to pack meetings and falling asleep on Scott’s shoulder muttering under his breath about Christina Aguilera and Carhartt overalls, he sometimes accidentally naps while he’s standing up. 

One night when everyone’s out at the diner, talking over each other and stealing each other’s food like they do every time they’re there, Scott decides to intervene when Derek almost faceplants into his fries. 

“Dude, why don’t you just stay with one of us?” Scott asks, slinging an arm around Derek’s shoulder to hold him up. It’s a nice gesture, sure, but it also makes it easier to get to Derek’s milkshake, which is exactly what Scott does. Derek knows that game all too well. Every single one of his packmates plays it way too often, and he seems to be a favorite target.

As if to demonstrate, Scott grabs the chocolate shake from in front of him and shoves the straw in his mouth as he stares at Derek, waiting for an answer.

“I don’t want to - ” Derek sighs and starts, but Scott interrupts him by slurping his stolen milkshake as loud as he can to drown out whatever Derek might be trying to say. 

They all know him too well, Derek thinks. They know he’ll just make excuses so he doesn’t end up a burden and taking up space that isn’t his, and no one’s interested in even considering it anymore. It’s frustrating and heartening all at once, if Derek’s being really honest with himself.

“C’mon, don’t be stubborn,” Stiles chimes in. “We’ve all got couches. Crash whenever you need to, like, this is what we’re here for,” he says, waving a hand around the table.

Malia nods furiously in Derek’s direction and Liam gives him a thumbs up, and he smiles tiredly back at them both. 

“I’ve got a futon if you want,” Kira offers, mumbling around a bite of her cheeseburger and leaning into Scott’s other side, getting comfortable and settling in next to him.

“Thank you, but I - ” Derek starts again, but Scott’s slurping next to him just gets aggressively louder and very, very pointed as he stares Derek down.

“Hey, seriously,” Allison cuts in, rolling her eyes fondly in Scott’s direction as she leans up and over the table to squeeze his hand quickly. The other one is holding Stiles’ over the table, tracing her thumb over his palm and their linked fingers as she speaks. “Look, our couch turns into a bed and we’ve got an extra set of keys, it’s totally easy. Just come and stay whenever you need to. Right?”

“Yeah, we’ve got you,” Stiles adds, stretching over everyone so he can steal one of Kira’s mozzarella sticks and shove the whole thing in his mouth at once.

Derek just looks between them for a minute, looks around the table and finds nothing but kind eyes and his overly-earnest pack, and then he nods in agreement and lets Allison grab his hand too. She squeezes it tight and he smiles around the booth and Scott finally gives him his milkshake back with a shit-eating grin on his face.

The next day, Allison makes him a spare set of keys and drops them off at his apartment during a particularly long Whitney Houston marathon happening next door.

“Whenever,” she says, smiling and pressing the keys into his hand. Derek could swear he that hears her humming along to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” as she walks away, waving over her shoulder at him as he watches her go.

So he listens. He lets them offer him this relief. The next time he falls asleep with his head stuck in the refrigerator when he’s trying to find the milk, he palms the keys in his pocket and learns the fastest way to get there if he wants to. 

The next time he feels like he can’t breathe because the cracking plaster is finding a home in his ribs, he packs a bag, shuts off his lights, and shows up at their door.

///

The first morning Derek wakes up in their living room, he's greeted by his creaking, cramping muscles, a belated fuck-you from his exhausted body for crashing before he managed to pull out the bed. He’s still exhausted, kind of fuzzy-headed, and every part of his body is sore from spending a night sleeping on a couch that isn’t his. He grew out of being able to do that a long time ago, and now it just makes everything hurt.

So he does what he did every time this used to happen: he stretches, lets his feet dangle off the end of the sofa as he rolls onto his back, slings an arm across his eyes to block out all the light. He’s trying to chase the last of the night before it’s gone, but he already knows he can’t.

When he hears voices somewhere vaguely to his left, he sits bolt upright and blinks his eyes a few times, trying to find something to focus on as he pulls himself into the land of the living and awake. Alert is another story entirely, but he’ll get there.

“Oh my god,” Derek just barely hears Stiles say, voice filtering through the room slowly. “Look at his hair.”

“I knew it wasn’t always perfect,” Allison whispers back conspiratorially, and Derek can hear the teasing edge in her voice just before she calls out to him. “Morning!”

He looks over the edge of the couch and sees both of them standing in front of the open refrigerator door, pantsless, pressed against each other, and holding breakfast-related food in their hands.

“We thought you might want something to eat,” Allison adds as Stiles leans down to drop a kiss to her bare shoulder. Her shirt is draped low over her collarbone, falling off to the side, and Stiles sweeps a hand down her arm as he drags his lips against her skin. They catch in the dip at the base of her neck and Allison smiles slow and happy. Allison turns toward him and cups his cheek in her hand, leans in to catch his mouth with hers in a lazy, syrupy kiss. 

Watching the two of them together, something like want settles deep in Derek’s stomach and burrows in. Takes hold in his gut and twists the desperate need for touch right out of his palms, out of his skin, draws the breath from his throat as he stares. He can’t even begin to tear his eyes away from them even though he’s suddenly and starkly aware of how much he’s intruding on their space. This is their home and he’s a visitor, pack or not, this is their moment he was never invited to see.

When they break apart, Stiles looks up at Derek with bright eyes and Derek’s throat goes ashy, dry. 

“Sorry,” Allison says, throwing him an apologetic look and biting her lip as she leans down to grab something that looks like a bunch of dill off the bottom shelf.

“Scrambled?” Stiles asks, holding up a carton of eggs.

Derek nods back at him. He doesn’t trust his voice. 

“Come on,” Allison calls, holding out her hand to him, beckoning him over into their world.

Peeling himself off the couch and making his way over to them makes Derek feel like everything is happening in slow-motion, like he’s doing what he’s doing without even realizing. Every part of his focus is on the clawing nerve in his gut that he tries to tell himself is fine. It’s fine.

He eats his scrambled eggs. He talks to them. He tries not to think about the way they’re easy with each other and how he suddenly wants it too, even though he has no idea what that could possibly look like or how they’d fit together, the three of them hand in hand. He tries not to think about the way he feels soft and safe with their eyes on him, their ringing laughter in his ears. He tries not to think about any of it.

He tries, he tries. He fails.

///

At the beginning, Derek only stays at Stiles and Allison’s place a couple of times a week. He usually crashes there on nights after he didn’t sleep at all, nights after the bleary mornings he got woken up too early. It’s mostly just to make sure he gets some rest when he needs it. Derek doesn’t like feeling like an imposition, something that disrupts their routine, even if they’re both good at going out of their way to tell him that he’s not. That they love him, that he’s family, that he’s pack.

Well, Stiles isn’t good at it. Stiles sits on his feet to wake him up in the morning and shoves the bathroom door open if he thinks Derek’s taking too long in the shower and steals his underwear so he can hide it whenever he gets the chance. When that happens, Derek gets almost as little sleep as he would if he were still staying at his apartment with his friends the Britney Spears experts. Once, two weeks in, Stiles even convinces Scott to help him draw dirty things on Derek’s face while he’s sleeping. Derek wakes up halfway through and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen two people run so fast as they do when they bolt out the door and leave him there, a half-done dick and only one ball penned on his cheek.

Mostly it’s easy. Derek fits pretty well into Stiles and Allison’s routine, too, and on days when he’s being generous with himself, it feels good to know that he’s slowly becoming a part of them. Even if it’s in the smallest ways, he knows he’s a part of their life, a part of their home. He doesn’t hesitate to let himself into the apartment, they start buying some of his favorite foods to keep stocked, they start pulling out the bed for him so it’s already made when he gets there. The third week, they clear out a shelf in the bathroom cabinet and give him a place to keep his toothbrush.

Derek isn’t lonely, but he knows he’s always been someone who wants the kind of intimacy people aren’t quick to give. He likes the fast ways touch makes people close, an easy hand on someone’s shoulder or legs pressed together under a table, steady arms and handshakes. People think he doesn’t like to be wrapped up in a hug, people think he’s closed off, but the pack knows better than that. They’re always piling in on him, hands around his wrists or climbing on his back or leaning against him on the couch while they watch some dumb TV show at his place.

Seeing it on other people, seeing it one-on-one, Derek can’t help but want that too; he wants to feel the joy that comes pouring off of Allison and Stiles when they’re linked together like they always are. He thinks he’s probably always wanted that.

Staying with them, he starts to breathe easier. He shakes the dust out of his lungs and he stops falling asleep standing up, so the plan is working just like it should.

They’re good at keeping him steady. Allison’s always ruffling his hair and Stiles’ hands are strong and sure on his back when they’re moving in small spaces, the kitchen, the bathroom. That tide-pull swell he felt when they kissed and he wanted them, it doesn’t go away. It just gets easier.

If his eyes linger a little too long sometimes on Allison’s mouth when she’s talking or the stretch of Stiles’ neck when he leans back in his chair, Derek chalks it up to feeling like a part of something bigger than himself. It’s just the way he learns new parts of people he loves. 

He pays attention to them, he notices them.

He hopes they notice him back.

///

The construction on his neighbor’s new state-of-the-art kitchen, as the note stuck to the front door of Derek’s apartment informs him when he goes home to make sure his entire place isn’t caved in or moldy, is expected to continue for another two months. Construction will operate on extended hours, including Saturday and Sunday, any time between the hours of 5AM and 10PM, with no discernable schedule. And, he learns, this has been approved by both the building’s owner and its superintendent.

Well. Okay.

Derek packs some more clothes into a duffel and hauls it over his shoulder, slips a rent check under his landlord’s door before he gets an eviction notice.

At least this time they left a note.

///

Two nights later, Derek’s up late reading in the near-dark living room when Stiles comes tumbling through the door of the room he and Allison share, darts past Derek and into the bathroom wearing nothing but boxers slung hazardously low on his hips, and then comes strolling casually back in after he’s done.

“Anything good?” Stiles asks, nodding his chin at Derek’s book and whispering even though it’s just the two of them and the bedroom door is closed. Instead of waiting for an answer, he opens the fridge and stands there for a second, deciding.

In the backlit light, Derek can see the shadows all down Stiles’ body, the tight, soft muscle just under the surface, wound like a spring right now. His rushing hands grab the orange juice and he drains it directly from the carton, emptying it entirely before putting it back on the shelf and shutting the door.

“Don’t tell Allison,” Stiles says, grinning.

“You’re an asshole,” Derek whispers back, because that’s where they’ve always been comfortable. That’s where their affection comes easy and where he knows he’s on solid ground, safe from all the parts of him that are telling him how much he wants it to be different now.

Stiles shrugs and retreats like he knows it’s true, and Derek falls asleep an hour later with his book open flat on his chest.

He doesn’t wake up until the morning, when he opens his eyes and sees Allison standing at the counter in her bra and underwear doing exactly what Stiles had done the night before: upending the carton of orange juice directly into her mouth, searching for anything at all and coming up dry and realizing exactly why almost immediately.

She turns around and sees Derek waking up, points the empty carton at him accusingly.

“Did you have anything to do with this?” 

“You two are perfect for each other,” Derek answers instead, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Allison laughs as she crosses the room toward him, and Derek watches the twist in her hips as she decides to join him on the couch. He slides over for her, presses his back into the cushions so she has enough room, and he’s only a little bit surprised when she folds herself against him, steals some of his blanket and presses her face into him.

She leans up and kisses his cheek softly, fondly, then rests her head on his shoulder. He has no idea where to put his hands. Everything seems like taking too much of what he wants, suddenly, so he lets them fall into his own lap instead, worries at the seam on his sleeve. She takes one of them in both of hers and slides her thumb against his palm. Back and forth, slow circles, a shock right to his rattling ribcage.

He’s been trying to ignore moments like this since he moved in, but he knows, in all reality, it’s what he wants: for them to give him what they give each other. To be able to fall asleep in between them, wrap his arms around Stiles’ neck and kiss him hard, hold Allison’s hand when they’re in the grocery store stocking up for the week. 

Not often, but sometimes - in quiet minutes of affection like this, Derek thinks he might be able to have what he wants. When Allison runs her nails down his arm when they’re sitting next to each other, when Stiles settles himself with his back to Derek’s chest on movie nights.

Derek wishes he could just fold himself into their life like that, but he can’t ruin what they’ve got. 

So instead he reads to her until she’s asleep there, snoring lightly against his shoulder, and he smiles up at Stiles when he joins them too, this little newfound family all stacked together.

This can be okay, Derek thinks. He can be okay with just this.

///

“So,” Scott opens with, planting himself in the booth directly across from Derek. “How’s it going over there?”

Malia slides in next to him, and Derek suddenly feels like he’s about to go through the worst interview of his life. They both look like they know too much and it’s freaking him out.

“Are you in love with them?” Malia asks before they even have menus in front of them.

“What?” Derek says.

“What?” Scott asks.

“What? I thought that’s what we were trying to figure out,” Malia answers, turning to look at Scott.

“Yeah, but I had a plan,” Scott says, “like, a really good plan.”

“Well, mine was better,” Malia shrugs.

“Oh my god,” Derek sighs, resting his face in his hands and refusing to look at either of them.

There’s a beat of silence while Malia looks between Scott and Derek and then fixes Derek with a stare. “Well?”

Derek wishes people would stop saying things about him that he hasn’t let himself believe yet.

“You know they love you, right?” Scott asks, like that would ever be something Derek lets himself think about.

Of course they love him. Derek’s known for years what the pack means to each other, what their different versions of love look like: Allison’s is quiet and fierce, Stiles’ is sarcastic and sharp, both easy with touch and good at knowing what Derek needs. He’s known them for so long that he doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t in love with them both, even before the two of them were together.

Even before he could smell them all over each other, before they both grew into themselves and started standing taller, wearing their scars proud, their bomb shelter hearts strong and true. 

Of course they love him. They’d never think of existing any other way. He’s pack, and pack protects their own.

“I’m going to get a burger,” Derek answers instead of telling them the truth. They’ll both hear his heart skip anyway, so they’ll get their answer either way.

On cue, Malia grins at him like she’s just won the lottery.

“Don’t gloat,” Derek tells her, barely managing a scowl in the face of her joy. “It isn’t cute.”

“I know for a fact that’s not true,” Malia contradicts. “It’s adorable.”

Scott laughs at them both and they flag down the waiter, order a round of burgers and shakes for the table. They don’t talk about it again, but Derek feels better.

He’s got this, even if he has nothing else. He has his pack, and that’s enough.

///

A month and a half into crashing at Allison and Stiles’ place, Derek’s staying almost every night. There’s an occasional Thursday every other week that he doesn’t, but he’s pretty much a permanent fixture.

He’s worked out a system with one of his good neighbors - not one of the assholes doing asshole renovations - where one of them will stop by and text each other the state of the damage and whether it’s worth it to come home. Derek’s on his way back from a night-run and thinking about staying at his place for once when a text pops up.

**jelyne, 9:58PM**  
 _don’t come home one of them is cleaning the place with the door open and putting all of their appliances in the middle of the hallway_

Derek snorts and texts her back a quick thanks, shoves his phone in his pocket and heads to Stiles and Allison’s place. His place too, by now.

It’s quiet when he gets there, kitchen’s dark, and he thinks maybe they just had an early night for once. He keeps his headphones in, pulls out the bed and finds the pillows they ended up throwing across the room in a heated game of Cranium when everyone was over two nights ago, sets them up. He gets changed for bed.

It’s only when Derek takes his headphones out to climb in that he hears it. He blushes immediately from head to toe and goes stock still in the middle of the room, one hand holding up his sheets and the other frozen mid-air.

It’s not like he hasn’t imagined this, but he’s a little bit surprised it took him this long to hear them fucking. They live here, they’re together, it’s not like they were going to stop for his benefit - they probably didn’t think he’d be coming back tonight, anyway.

Derek has no idea what to do.

He knows what he _should_ do, but he can’t. He can’t bring himself to put his headphones back in or leave or both. He stands there helplessly, even knowing how much harder it’s going to be for him now that he knows what they both sound like, the hurried hushed sounds they make. 

It’s easier now to imagine Stiles with three fingers buried deep in Allison and his tongue sliding over her clit. It’s never been this explicit before, and now all Derek can see is Stiles’ head buried between her thighs, palms laid flat to spread them wide and wanting, his slick mouth fucking into her too eagerly, messy and intent. Now he knows what noises Stiles might make when Allison’s eating him out, face down with his ass up and his own hands holding his cheeks open. Now he knows what they sound like when they both get off, what Allison might sound like when she’s riding Stiles’ face and he can barely breathe.

Maybe Derek feels like a terrible friend, knowing all of this, but he also knows he likes it. He likes knowing what every little noise means, likes knowing at least something about that part of their lives even if he can’t be a part of it the way he wants.

He hears Stiles grind out Allison’s name, a broken sort of benediction, and he finally moves. He groans, gets in bed, covers his face in a pillow and waits until he’s buried enough that it drowns out all the noise.

Derek slides a hand into his shorts so fast. He palms his dick, gets himself off so quickly it’s almost too much. There’s no lube, no slide, just the sticky precome he smears down over his shaft as he pumps his fist too hard. He comes all over his hand after two minutes and sits there breathing heavy, breathing fast, incapable of coming down while they’re still going.

When they finish, Derek can feel the color on his face spreading high over his cheeks and ears. He closes his eyes against every single thought racing through his brain and he feels, not for the first time in the past few months, like he’s living a life just next to the life he wants. 

In the morning when they’re getting ready for work, Derek can still smell Stiles and Allison all over each other. He waits until they leave and then he gets in the shower, exhausted and wanting more than ever, and then he shamelessly fucks himself open on three of his own fingers and comes into the spray of the water twice before he rests his back against the wet shower wall, breathes, and pulls himself back together again.

///

Derek stays away from the apartment for a week straight after that. He crashes on Kira’s futon, which is even less comfortable and comes with concerned looks, he sucks it up and spends a night at his own place despite feeling like he’s in a high school woodshop classroom every time he steps into the hall. Despite the number of times Mandy Moore’s “So Real” gets stuck in his head over the course of two days.

Everybody notices. Malia keeps asking what’s wrong and Scott keeps patting him on the shoulder and sighing in his general direction. He starts falling asleep standing up again and goes out of his way to avoid looking at Stiles and Allison as much as he can, and then eventually he doesn’t see them at all. They just aren’t around, all of a sudden.

Derek wants to go to them. He wants to apologize for leaving but doesn’t want to tell them why. He wants to love them without needing anything back. He wants to move back in and pretend nothing ever happened, but he can’t.

It isn’t until Scott posts up on his loveseat, feet propped on the coffee table and eating the last of the food in Derek’s fridge, that he gets over himself.

“They’re sick,” Scott says, mumbling around a sandwich. “Gave each other the flu. Haven’t left the house in like three days.”

Derek hums. “Huh.”

Scott’s eyes light up with something like pride, like he knows exactly what Derek’s considering. “Your move, dude,” he says, easy as that.

Closer to hope, maybe, Scott’s bright eyes smiling at him across the room. 

Pride, hope. Either way, it’s something Derek has never let himself have.

///

So he goes.

Derek unlocks the door and lets himself into the apartment and everything feels immediately awful when he steps inside. He’s been gone too long, even just a week, and it doesn’t feel like home anymore. The air is acrid and tight, hazy, like time stood still but everything changed in his absence.

He feels thick with sweat and sick sheen, listens for Allison and Stiles breathing through the fog and throws the bedroom door open to find them both buried under piles of blankets strewn haphazardly across the bed. It’s basically been turned into a sick den, and Derek thanks whatever powers that be that werewolves aren’t in the business of catching anything from humans.

“This is pathetic,” he says, smiling tiredly at them both when they look up at him, peering over layers and layers of fabric. Just seeing them there, curled in on each other and relief painted across their faces, makes everything feel more settled and centered. Derek suddenly feels grounded again, all the weirdness from the past week gone from his mind. He knows it was all on his end, anyway.

“I’m not sick,” Stiles tries to say, but it comes out sounding like ‘dick’ because he can’t pronounce the letter ‘s.’ “I’m just making her feel better,” he adds, and Derek looks at Allison, whose mouth is set in a grim line of determination.

“He did this to me,” she accuses, but her voice sounds crackling and out of practice.

Derek will never understand human illness. Something as simple as a cold renders incredible people useless, and he thinks it’s pointless even if he knows it’s unavoidable. Like now: two people he loves more than he’s figured out how to say, incapacitated by a germ.

“Hey,” Stiles murmurs, and Derek looks down at them, waiting.

They’re gross and perfect, snotty and weird. It’s adorable, Derek thinks, and then hates himself for it even more.

“C’mere,” Allison says, and Derek walks closer to the bed, waiting for them to tell him what they want.

“No,” Stiles manages, closing his eyes and waving him even closer.

Allison reaches out a hand and finds Derek’s, links her fingers in his softly. “Get in. Get in with us,” she says, and Derek freezes where he’s standing. It’s not the first time he’s thought about climbing in with them, but it’s the first time he’s ever known that he’s allowed. That the world wouldn’t shatter, that he can have this small thing.

“Please,” Stiles mumbles, and Allison pulls him down until he’s resting against her on the edge of the bed.

“Okay,” Derek says, eyes full of questions that they’re both too tired to answer. He’ll ask them later, maybe, but for now he just shrugs off his jacket and toes off his shoes, breathes steady until he can wrap his head around what they need.

“Where do you want me?”

Stiles runs a hand over the space in bed between them, and Derek slides in quietly, stays above the covers. He doesn’t want to assume, and he’d rather play puppet than make a mistake he doesn’t know how to recover from.

This is easy. He can do this. 

This is just like Sunday mornings on the couch watching cartoons, Thursday nights in the kitchen making dinner. This is napping on the floor while they’re curled up around him, sitting in the booth at the diner with Allison’s hand resting on his knee and Stiles’ arm pressed against his all the way down to the fingertips. This is easy like finding Allison washing dishes and pressing a kiss to her temple, the way she leans into it and sighs. Easy like Stiles carding his fingers through Derek’s hair when he gets out of the shower in the morning, easy like the way he touches Derek’s back when he moves around him in his space, an anchor, a grounding force.

This is just like what they already have, what they’ve built together in just a few months in a tight space, an open home.

It’s possible Derek may have miscalculated what he was to them before this. It’s possible he may already have so many of the things he’s been too scared to chase.

“Under,” Stiles says, drifting in and out of sleep even in the middle of his sentence.

So Derek does it - he climbs in and finds them both almost naked, sweating out whatever it is they’ve got, wrapped only in their underwear and thin top sheets tangled between their legs.

Allison shuffles back and Stiles moves forward until they’re all lying in a row, all on their side and pressed against each other, and Derek has no idea what to do, who to touch, what the hell to do with his hands. He never knows what the hell to do with his hands. He has no idea what he’s allowed even though he knows what he’s always wanted.

Allison calms him first; she grabs his hand and wraps it around her stomach, pulling him tight against her back as she bends their knees together.

“Hey, is this okay?”

Derek nods against the pillow, manages to tell her that it is as she tucks his hand under her side, skin on skin on skin, and Derek starts taking her pain without even realizing it. He feels a sting in his wrist and sees the black lines in his arm, the sickness in his veins wrestling it out of her and giving her some peace. It makes him feel useful and wanted, and he relaxes into it when he feels Stiles tuck himself in behind Derek and drop a kiss to his neck.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, pressing his face into Derek’s shoulder. He keeps his mouth there, moving softly, thanking Derek over and over again with a kiss in between each one.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Stiles says, and Derek takes a sharp breath in.

“Please stay,” Allison asks, so Derek does.

///

Construction ends on a Tuesday.

Derek gets a text when they’re laying in bed in the morning and Stiles reads it over his shoulder, nosing his way into the nape of Derek’s neck and whispering protests against his skin in the lazy morning light before they all get up for work. Stiles frowns, takes the phone and shows it to Allison.

“Your place is done,” Stiles murmurs, lips dragging along Derek’s shoulder in a refusal to let go.

“I know,” Derek answers, and he feels the soft tap of Allison’s fingers at the waistband of his boxers, her blunt nails digging into the soft small swell of his belly. She tangles her fingers into his hair there, dips them below the fabric.

“Don’t go,” Stiles argues. “Don’t leave.”

“Let us keep you,” Allison hums, rolling in to smile at him, lazy and happy written all over her face.

“Live here. Live with us. Live in our bed. Let’s never get out of bed,” Stiles tries. “Just don’t go home.”

Derek laughs into them both, and for the first time in months he feels like the life he has is the life he wants: open hands on either side of him, waiting to catch his falling heart.

“You are home,” Allison says before she kisses him, touches him, breaks him open.

And Derek finally, finally knows it’s true.


End file.
